Fiction is the most joyous, beautiful, sophisticated, wonderful thing in the world.

Her grief grieved her. His devastated her.

India lives in several centuries at the same time. Every night outside my house I pass a road gang of emaciated laborers digging a trench to lay fiber optic cables to speed up digital revolution. They work by the light of a few candles.

Because of who I am and what place I have now in India, I'm petitioned all the time to get involved. It's exhausting and very difficult to have to say, 'Look, I'm only one person. I can't do everything.' I know that I don't want to be worn to the bone where I lose my sense of humor.

The minute what you think of as radical becomes an institutionalised, funded operation, you're in some trouble.

Human rights takes history out of justice.

The only dream worth having, I told her, is to dream that you will live while you're alive and die only when you're dead.